The Blow-It-Up Decade

Wed, 06/20/2012 - 22:06 EDT - Forbes.com - Top Stories

Here?s a meme: Powerful interests decide an existing, generally esteemed and functioning institution isn?t working, or will break down in the future. So they plan not to fix it, but to blow it up now and replace it with something new and different. They can?t be public or transparent about the plan, however, because a ...

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Institutions are brittle. This is one of the big lessons of 2011. The News of the World and the presidencies of Hosni Mubarak and Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali have in common the fact that they looked strong, but suddenly collapsed when they came under strain. This brittleness has implications for public sector reform. Take as the starting point Tim’s questions:

By Simon Johnson. Tim Geithner and Larry Summers are talking a good game on fiscal policy to the G20. But they are struggling with to establish traction for their “spend now, consolidate later” message. Fortunately, there is an easy and obvious opportunity to establish credibility on this issue: Bring Paul Krugman into government.

OTTAWA — Canada’s Conservatives, after nearly eight years of power, have become the country’s Establishment Party.
Traditionally viewed as a collection of misfits who couldn’t keep power once they achieved it — and who stabbed each other in the back during opposition — the Tories are now a political powerhouse.

Just about everyone agrees the scheduled 21 percent pay cut to doctors would be a devastating blow to patient care. But without the cut, the federal deficit will balloon another $300 billion over the next decade.» E-Mail This » Add to Del.icio.us

By Matthew Potter:At SAIC's (SAI) annual meeting of shareholders, one attendee raised the issue of the company being in a similar state to Rockwell -- offering a diverse product line that was hard to identify, and ultimately deciding to break itself up and sell its components -- and whether this figured into management'

For most of you, this is the big one. The inclusion of a strong public insurance option has become, for most observers I know, the single most recognizable marker for victory. If the public plan exists, liberals have won. If it's eliminated, or neutered, then conservatives have triumphed.